?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
SIDNEY GEIST (1914-2005)
Untitled. Painted balsa wood and wire on a wooden base. 470 mm; 18 1/2 inches (height including base). Signed in ink on the underside. Circa 1940.
Geist was known as a sculptor and a leading authority on the work of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). He was born in Paterson, New Jersey and studied at St. Stephen's College (now Bard College) in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1931, he started an apprenticeship with Paul Fiene (1899-1949), which lasted several years. He also worked with William Zorach (1889-1966) at the Art Students League of New York and studied in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967).
While he never identified with a particular style or movement, he found inspiration in Indigenous carvings of the Pacific Northwest, American folk art and American and European modern art movements. His sculptures depicted abstract and figural totems as well as robust female forms, and he worked with natural materials such as wood, stone and clay, eschewing machinery. He also worked in two dimensions, creating collages, paintings and works on paper. He was an accomplished writer, publishing extensively on Brancusi, among other artists, and taught at several institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, Pratt Institute and Vassar College.
